


the banshee

by littletrenchcoatangel



Series: Her Sweet Kiss (the story of a lady bard and her idiot witcher) [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, F/M, Light Bondage, Pre-Slash, if you could even call it that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:14:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22300897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littletrenchcoatangel/pseuds/littletrenchcoatangel
Summary: “Why, Geralt, don’t tell me you’ve never made a womanscreambefore?”
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Her Sweet Kiss (the story of a lady bard and her idiot witcher) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1605256
Comments: 8
Kudos: 228





	the banshee

**Author's Note:**

> this is the stupidest thing i've ever written, i'm so sorry

Geralt has been travelling with the bard for just over a month, no more than two, when it happens.

He’s brushing Roach in the stables, placating her with a sweet apple bought from the market, when he hears a scream, muted by the distance but loud enough that both Geralt and the nearby stable hand flinch at the sound.

Under normal circumstances, he’s sure he’d investigate, seek out the source of the sound and deal with whatever had caused it, monster or man, but this scream was one he knew well, the sound of which caused a tightness in his chest that made him drop his brush with a swear.

He leaves Roach with her apple, promising to return and finish grooming her later, and ventures off towards the direction of the scream, his swords a familiar weight at his back.

The inn isn’t far, tucked around the corner from the stables on the edge of the village. The building backs on to the nearby forest, the hunting grounds of the harpy that brought Geralt to the town. It’s the most logical place for an attack to occur, and is also the last known place Geralt had seen the person to whom the scream belonged.

He’s approaching the alleyway that leads to the back of the building when he hears another scream, equally as piercing as the one before. Geralt realises with a start that it’s coming from  _ inside _ the inn, and not from the copse of trees behind it, and heads towards the door with a growl.

Inside, the inn’s patrons are split between staring towards the staircase in fear and going about their business. At a look from Geralt, one of them points towards the stairs with a shaking hand.

Geralt approaches the staircase warily, hand poised to draw a sword, and he stalks towards the landing on featherlight feet, hoping that whatever threat awaits is too preoccupied with its victim to hear him approaching.

When a choked off moan echoes from one of the nearby rooms and is followed immediately by the hoarse voice of a man, Geralt quickens his steps, hand curling around the hilt of his steel sword as he reaches for the handle of the door.

Geralt prepares himself for something unsightly in the moment it takes him to shove open the door, the weak lock no match for the brunt of his weight against the wood, but he stops short at the sight that greets him. His fingers falter on the hilt of his sword, causing it to fall, unused, back into its sheath.

In tandem with the sound of splintering wood, a third and final scream erupts from the room, louder and more frantic than any of the last, acting as an answer to a question Geralt hadn’t thought to ask.

_ What if there is no danger? _

“Oh,” he manages, barely a word, the sound of it just loud enough in the silence to draw the attention of the prone figure on the bed.

Jaskier looks up, her naked form only partially hidden by the equally naked figure of her frightened bedpartner, her entire torso heaving with the effort of her breathing. Her breasts shake gently with the force of her sudden exhale, drawing Geralt’s gaze as his fingers clench uncomfortably around the metal of the doorknob.

“What the  _ fuck _ ?” Jaskier’s bedpartner shouts, recovering from the shock of interruption and drawing the bedlinen up to cover his dignity. He makes no effort to protect Jaskier in the same manner as he scrambles to the opposite side of the mattress.

Jaskier’s eyes have not left Geralt’s face, her flushed cheeks bringing out the striking colour of them, and she clears her throat roughly to draw Geralt’s eyes away from the bead of sweat he had been watching roll down her exposed thigh.

“Can I help you, Geralt?” she asks, curling her bare legs up towards her chest. The linen caught on her knees falls to the side, obscuring most of Geralt’s view of her nakedness. Geralt is sure that she would have done more to cover herself, had her arms not been secured to the headboard in the way that they were.

“I, uh – fuck,” he manages eloquently in response, and disappears back out the door without more than a frustrated growl, doing his best to pull the splintered wood back into its ruined frame.

He asks himself, while he waits downstairs, how it is that he’s already achingly familiar with her screams after such a short time, but the thought causes his teeth to clench and his jaw to ache as he considers that he is not familiar with  _ those  _ screams, so he drowns it with cheap ale.

Jaskier joins him leisurely, entirely unaware of the turmoil inside Geralt’s head, her lithe fingers playing with the drawstring at the front of her tunic as she finishes dressing herself. Her hair, which had been unrestrained and wild upstairs, is tied neatly in a braid, secured with a familiar ribbon that Geralt struggles to tear his eyes away from.

Her lute is dangling at her side, the strap resting diagonally across her chest, and the small pack she carries a change of clothes in bumps against it with each step.

She clears her throat as she approaches, taking a vacant stool and pulling it up to his side. She doesn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that many of the patrons by now know that it was her screams echoing through the building and that the haggard man she had followed down the stairs was the cause. Geralt wonders if the trobairitz is capable of shame, catching the bored look on her face as she rubs absently at the marks forming on her wrists.

“So,” she begins, and Geralt suppresses a wince at the rough timbre of her usually light voice. She gestures for the innkeeper to bring her a pint of ale. “Are we off, then?”

Geralt swallows heavily around the drink in his mouth and turns to her. “What?”

She coughs into her fist, thanking the innkeeper with a wink when he returns with her pint. She takes a large mouthful of the drink and places the tankard back on the bar before turning her gaze to Geralt.

“I can only assume it was something important, if you’d forgone your manners to burst into my room without knocking,” she reasons. “And with you, I’m beginning to learn that ‘important’ is often ‘life-threatening’, and requires our immediate departure. So, are we going?”

Geralt can’t fault her logic, but shakes his head regardless. “No.”

To her credit, Jaskier doesn’t seem overly surprised by his answer. She adjusts her lute to sit more comfortably against her spine, and drops her pack to the ground at her feet.

“So, your interruption was-?” she begins, a coy smile twisting the corner of her mouth.

“A misunderstanding,” Geralt admits. “I thought–”

He cuts himself off, unable and, in some ways,  _ unwilling, _ to admit that the sound of her screaming, and then moaning as if in pain, had torn at his senses and forced him to seek her out. That he had feared for her safety, and had felt an obligation to ensure it, despite knowing her for barely a few weeks, and doing his best to scare her away in the meantime.

“Ah,” she says, still smiling, as if she were privy to the thoughts inside Geralt’s head regardless. “Apologies for misleading you, dear witcher,” she tells him, around another smile and a mouthful of ale.

They sit in companionable silence for a time, Jaskier sparing no sly glances or winks or waves to the patrons around them, and Geralt buries his face in his tankard to stop himself from watching. Finding it empty, he sets it down with a low growl and clenches his fingers around the handle just for something to focus on.

“I don’t-” Geralt starts suddenly, unsure before he begins if he even wants to say anything. “Are you always so-?”

Jaskier’s lips, still kiss-bitten and red from her activities upstairs, twitch as she turns to him, as if she is fighting another, insufferable smile.

“Why, Geralt, don’t tell me you’ve never made a woman  _ scream _ before?”

Geralt has, he knows, but never so loudly, or so often. He wonders who, in any instance, was more genuine – the women he had drawn to a shocking climax, so sudden and great that they had torn their throats with the force of it, or Jaskier, upstairs with a stranger in the late afternoon, thrice in a matter of minutes, each one more forceful than the last. He wonders why he cares.

“For shame, witcher,” Jaskier continues, when Geralt doesn’t answer. “A man of your reputation, unable to pleasure a woman so. I knew you were a brute, but a selfish bedmate? For shame!”

“I’ve pleasured women,” Geralt insists, before he can help himself. “Just not so-”

Jaskier’s melodic laughter cuts him off, her gentle fingers pressing against the leather of his armour with a surprising amount of force as she leans into his side. She pulls her tankard to her lips and downs the last of it, not removing her fingers from the witcher’s arm, and laughs again, unprompted.

“I jest,” she says, looking up, the scowl on Geralt’s face sobering her laughter, but doing nothing to dispel the smile on her face. “I’m sure you’re a very generous lover, Geralt, and that many a woman has sung praises to your skills in the night.”

Geralt hums in lieu of a response, causing Jaskier to snort unflatteringly before she turns away, drawing the attention of the innkeeper once more. She asks him for a meal and another drink for Geralt, before spinning the lute around to her chest and throwing the witcher a blinding smile as she leaps from her stool, kicking her pack against his feet as she moves.

Geralt doesn’t watch as she introduces herself to the crowd around them, doesn’t spare a thought for the undoubtedly mesmerising smile on her face as she wanders from table to table, strumming her lute absently as she thinks of an appropriate song to entertain them all.

She dives into a familiar tune after a few minutes, one Geralt has heard countless times over the years, obviously deciding that familiarity is the best way to begin – as she often does – and that the fastest way to coin is through the same, exhausted love song that she has sung at every inn they’ve stopped at on their journey from Posada.

Distantly, he is aware of the crowds growing interest, of clapping hands and stamping feet and the harmonious echo of Jaskier’s laughter during the chorus, but when she delves into a verse featuring bed sheets and bodies, he finds his mind drawn, painfully, back to the scene he had interrupted.

Jaskier was by no means an unsightly woman – her features were soft, and feminine, and symmetrical enough that she was pleasing to look at for a time. Her blue eyes were the colour of the summer sky, striking in their intensity and their ability to observe even the smallest of details. She had golden hair that curled in the heat and often slipped from its ties like Geralt’s own when she moved too excitedly through a room, and her figure had drawn many an eye in their travels across the continent.

Geralt knew that she entertained men, where she could – he had watched her disappear with strangers after her performances enough times to know that she was well versed in the art of pleasure, but he had never imagined that he might catch her in the act of it.

He had not expected to see her enjoying herself when he’d thrown himself into her room, hadn’t dreamed that he might be an unwelcome presence after hearing her scream as she had, and he had perhaps entertained a brief thought that she might be more grateful than others had, when he saved them from men too stupid to take no for an answer.

To see her as he had opened far too many avenues of thought, and Geralt hadn’t the faintest clue what to do with it.

For one, the man was far older than any of her previous partners, his hair greying at the temples and his skin darkened after years of working in fields and pastures. If he’d had to guess, Geralt would assume the man had entertained many women in his time, and perhaps married one or two along the way.

He was, by no means, similar to the youthful, virginal types Geralt had seen Jaskier shooing from her rooms in the early hours of the morning, with nothing but a wrinkled linen covering her slight frame.

Geralt spared a moment to wonder if something had changed in the woman, for her to seek out different types of partners all of a sudden, but he dismissed the thought quickly when it turned to comparisons to himself.

Another thought that troubled Geralt – and did so only because he couldn’t think of how else to react to it – was the sight of Jaskier bound to the bed, by the very ribbons she used to tie her hair each morning. A shocking contrast to her pale skin, the red fabric had stood out like blood and the way she grasped at the knots in the midst of her pleasure caused Geralt’s body to react in ways he preferred not to think about.

Because of course, when he had fought his way into the room, it wasn’t to find Jaskier fighting, struggling, or crying out in fear. He hadn’t found the woman weak and desperate, hoping for Geralt to rescue her, or defend her honour, or do anything as ridiculous as tear the other man away from her and scare him away.

Instead, he had found her weak and desperate for  _ more _ , begging not for rescue but for  _ release _ , for her lover to continue in his ministrations and fulfil the demands of her body.

He had found her stretched out and waiting, her back arched towards her partner, chest heaving as she gasped through her climax, hands twisting in their restraints as she grasped for something tangible to ground her as she rode the waves of her release.

He had found her, euphoric, enjoying the attention of a stranger, unaware in those few seconds that Geralt was witnessing the very moment of her apogee.

Geralt knows she is aware of it now, that she had seen no shame in sharing her pleasure with even the stable hand a street away, that she is not embarrassed by the crowd of strangers she now entertains. Geralt knows that she doesn’t care that he has seen her at her most vulnerable, or that he knows intimate details of her preferences.

He knows, because she says as much, twirling past him as she performs, graceful and hypnotic as she draws the eye of every man and woman present, faultlessly drifting from one song to the next, capturing a room worth of hearts in a moment.

In the morning, before dawn has come and the townsfolk are awake, Geralt will venture into the forest and take care of the harpy, and undoubtedly have to suffer the arduous task of regaling the act to Jaskier when he returns, for her to turn it into a song or sonnet or something equally, contrarily romantic.

Jaskier will ask questions Geralt will be unprepared for, will view the creature in a different light to the one Geralt is accustomed to and yawn all the while after waking from her slumber early enough to catch Geralt when he returns. She will pester him into taking a bath, and cleaning his clothes, and staying long enough to sing another song or two so that they have extra coin for their next stint at an inn, and Geralt will entertain her because he knows he wants these things as much as she does.

He will find himself, inevitably, watching her walk ahead of him on the path to the next town, or contract, or monster, listening to her ramble and compose and throw her voice into the wind. He will huff a laugh as she trips over a stick or a rock or her own feet, and she will stare back at him in indignation and sing a nonsensical verse about Geralt, the ratbastard of Rivia, and how terrible a man he is, and how she much prefers the presence of his horse.

Roach will make a noise of support, the traitor, and Jaskier will throw her head back and laugh loudly as Geralt groans, and her hair will fall free of its bonds.

Geralt will catch the ribbon on the wind, tucking it into the chest of his armour for when Jaskier finally notices its absence, and the sensation of it will predictably draw Geralt’s mind to the night previous, and the sight of Jaskier in a similar state, at the hands of a stranger.

The image of her bound there, wrists secured to the headboard with ribbons, hair wild and face open in ecstasy, will stick with Geralt for a long time.


End file.
